


Strange

by BeautyOnFyre



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautyOnFyre/pseuds/BeautyOnFyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom and Bill were fairly normal boys. That is to say, they were as normal as identical twin boys could be. However, whenever people watched the two boys closely, they would note odd things. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The creation of "Strange" from the Alice in Wonderland Soundtrack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange

**Author's Note:**

> Just a ficlet that came to me when listening to Strange by Tokio Hotel ft. Kerli from Almost Alice

Tom and Bill were fairly normal boys. That is to say, they were as normal as identical twin boys could be. However, whenever people watched the two boys closely, they would note odd things. The boys would sit so that they were always touching, even at the dinner table where they were side-by-side, visibly separated but ankles and feet hooked together under the table. It wasn’t odd for two brothers, let alone twin brothers, to be close, but even Simone and Jorg found their behavior a tad… well, strange.

When Bill was afraid of thunder storms as a child, he wouldn’t seek out his parents in the night. Instead, he crossed the room and cuddled into bed with Tom. When Tom broke his arm at the age of five, it was Bill who sat clutching his other hand to comfort him. Tom had screamed in terror when his mother said that Bill would sit in the waiting room with their father while she went in with Tom. It all ended with Bill on the padded table beside Tom as his break was reset and put into a cast.

During Jorg and Simone’s divorce, the boys could be found curled up together with their stuffed animals in Bill’s bed or a fort made of their bed sheets. They wouldn’t talk, just look at one other and snuggle. No one seemed to know what to do with them because they only relied on each other.

____

In high school, everyone started to see a transition. Tom and Bill remained side by side as they found their own styles. Tom had finally convinced Simone to let him get dreadlocks and Bill had begun his foray into the world of cosmetics in the form of dark and dramatic eyeliners. The changes were met with little resistance from the boys’ friends, so Simone figured it couldn’t hurt. Surely the wild hair and make-up was just a phase, she thought.

____

Simone sometimes worried for her youngest son. Tom had attracted a lot of attention in the form of women while Bill sat by and watched girls drape themselves across his brother’s lap. She could tell that Bill, at the ripe age of 17, had no interest in girls whatsoever. However, his eye didn’t stray to his own persuasion either, by the looks of it.

Then, in a moment of astonishing clarity, she understood.

She watched Bill as he watched his brother flirt with a girl outside their school. The jealousy seemed to emanate off him until he saw Tom peck the girl on her cheek. She watched as his eyes flew away from the view outside of the window of her SUV to his hands. He seemed to study his carefully manicured nails and jumped minutely in his seat when Tom opened the back door and climbed in behind Bill’s seat. Nothing was said about it the whole ride home.

____

“What’s your problem? Stop acting like a girl, Bill,” Tom hissed. “Get over yourself and stop being a bitch.”

Bill quirked an eyebrow, “I’m not acting like a _girl_ , Tom, and if anyone needs to get over themselves it’s you.”

“Then what the hell was that? You are being an ass for no reason.”

“You know exactly why I did it. You would have done the same,” he shot back, pushing past Tom on their bus and going to the washroom to take off his makeup. It seemed like only yesterday that he had first applied a shaky coat of eyeliner to his pale skin in the secrecy of his own bathroom back home. Years later now, he applied the dark kohl with accuracy and precision.

“In what universe would I cock block you?” Tom’s voice was incredulous as he stood in the door. He remembered watching Bill for the first time and his younger brother asking him if he looked pretty. Bill always looked pretty like that. His androgynous look worked for him, in all honesty.

“If only you knew,” the younger of the two muttered.

Hearing the words he was not supposed to, Tom exploded. “When? When have I ever stepped in the way, Bill?”

Losing his composure completely, Bill’s temper flared. “Are you so stupid?” he shouted. “You just don’t get it! You don’t know what it’s like to be me; you cannot fathom what it feels like watching the person you love brush you off day after day like a stranger. You don’t feel the hurt that I do, Tom. You don’t get it.”

“Get what, Bill? I’m your brother – your twin. If I don’t get it then no one will.”

“I love you Tom and-”

“I love you too but-”

Tom was cut off by a simple, “No you don’t.”

Silence reigned in the tour bus for a few seconds and Tom’s expression softened from raging to uncomprehending. “Of course I do. You’re my brother.” Tom’s eyebrows knitted together, still not understanding where Bill was going with this. The incident in the club was now forgotten in the wake of his confusion.

“Tom, you don’t love me. That is the hardest thing that I have to realize every day that I look at you. I look at you and see the other half of me – the half that everybody searches for in their life. I try to be what you want but I’m never going to be enough. No matter how much make-up I wear or how silky and long my hair is or how sweet I smell: I will never be what you want.” Bill’s voice broke and tears began running down his face. “You will never love me the way I love you.” He sniffed and let go of a breath that he didn’t realize he was holding. He refused to meet Tom’s eyes and turned back to the mirror with a new face cloth in his hand to remove his mask.

Tom just stood there in the hall outside of the bathroom watching Bill take off his makeup. His mind was catching up and taking in everything when Bill brushed past him and stripped out of his tight jeans and t-shirt to crawl into his cold, empty bunk in silence. Tom still stood there for a moment after Bill had pulled the curtains on his bunk shut, staring at the discarded t-shirt that had been flung carelessly to the floor. He had taken only one step towards the article of clothing when he heard the tell-tale sniffling of Bill crying.

His chest hurt like someone had punched him. His brother was crying. Bill didn’t cry easily. It truly hurt a part of him to hear the sobs of his twin. His body was seemingly on autopilot as he too shed his clothes until he was down to his boxers and opened the curtains just long enough to climb in next to Bill. Despite being the reason Bill was crying, he clung to Tom as Tom rubbed soothing circles on his back. No words were exchanged as it would only make things worse.

____

“Good news,” Jost said as Gustav entered the meeting room last. “They’re looking for help with the new Alice in Wonderland movie’s soundtrack. I managed to get us a collaboration track with that little Estonian girl. Carrie or something like that.”

“Kerli?” Bill’s eyes lit up.

“That’s it! That’s the one. I can never remember her name. I checked out some of her work and she has a good sound that I think will work with ours. Anyways, she said she prefers to do one-on-one writing so she’ll meet up with Bill for some lyrics and the three of you,” David motioned to Tom, Georg and Gustav, “are going to experiment with some sounds. Good?” At the four nods he continued, “Great. Let’s get to work then. We start first thing tomorrow.”

Bill’s look then morphed from excited to shame as soon as he caught Tom’s eye. His gaze drifted down before he pushed himself out of his chair and left the room to head upstairs to his suite. His feet dragged against the floor and he couldn’t seem to pick them up. His melancholic aura was duly noted by all four other men before he left the room and each eye, unknown to Bill, instantly narrowed on Tom.

It was not, however, Bill’s twin that came after him, but Georg. As the more empathetic soul, Georg saw something was forming a chasm betwixt the two brothers and Tom made no move to fix it. By the time Georg made it to Bill’s suite, Bill had already locked the door and curled up on the white sheets of the hotel room’s bed and taken on a fetal-like state of near-awareness. Georg swiped the extra key-card to Bill’s suite and opened the door to the vision of the petit dark-haired man in all his vulnerable glory.

Knowing Bill the way he did, Georg simply closed the door, shucked his shoes to pad across the pristine carpet and climb onto the bed beside Bill. Being a creature of comfort, a sucker for snuggles that he was, Bill reacted by sidling up to Georg so that they were touching and each could feel the other’s warmth. Georg carded his fingers through Bill’s beautiful mane. “I miss your hair being brown with the blonde highlights,” he said truthfully. He needed to be open with Bill. “It’s still beautiful but I definitely liked the blonde bits in there.” He massaged Bill’s scalp and got a low moan from him. He was practically humming, enjoying such a simple pleasure. “Talk to me Billie.”

A heavy sigh broke Bill’s lips and he could feel his tear ducts starting to over-react. “I-I… I told Tom…” he struggled to begin with his voice wavering and the first tears sliding down his cheeks. “Told him how I felt,” a small hysteric hiccup marred his speech, “and he just- he…”

“Shh,” Georg consoled. He wrapped Bill up closer in his arms knowing that the younger of the two needed it. “Calm down.”

“What did I do, Georg? I wrecked this all. I-I can’t-“

“Tell him.” Georg drew back and looked Bill right in the eyes. “I know our songs are for him. In Die Nacht was definitely for Tom.”

“But I can’t…”

“Sing it for him, Bill. He thinks you have a beautiful voice. He’ll have to listen. Put your words into a song for him,” Georg cooed in his ear comfortingly.

Bill burrowed into the warm arms of his long-time friend and band mate. “Stay? Please? Just for the night?” Georg’s answer was unspoken as he pulled the blankets over them and tightened his bear hug. He loved Bill, Tom and Gustav like brothers and it was time to be the brother that Bill needed, since his biological one was being an identical ass.

____

“I thought about this for the last three nights since my manager told me we were doing a duet,” Kerli said as she unwound her scarf from her neck and removed the stylish yet functional knit wool hat. “I’m not sure what you were thinking about this but I think this shouldn’t just be about Alice tripping around in Wonderland.”

Bill’s eyes curiously sought hers as he quirked a perfectly manicured brow. “Really? What do you propose as an alternate angle?”

The blonde was flicking her labret stud under her pink lips. “I was hoping to make this more close to home for us. To work in our own feelings that matched Alice’s in the movie. Like being challenged, or scared or…”

“Strange?”

Both sets of eyes met and a small smile appeared on both.

“Perfect.”

____

“I get this feeling that these lyrics mean a lot to you,” she spoke before she blew a stream of cool breath over the rim of her tea mug. “I understand some of the things you’ve written but in the same token, I feel like you’re more passionate about it.” Bill’s brown eyes scanned the petite Estonian girl wondering if she could be trusted. She put the mug on the low table between them and leaned her elbows on her knees, legs crossed under her on the armchair. “Who hurt you?”

Bill sighed and knew he wasn’t getting out of it. “I’ll tell you if you tell me first.”

She had a brief look of exasperation before leaning back and thinking, “Okay. Umm… When I was a little girl, my dad used to be home on Sundays while my mom worked at the store getting extra shifts. My dad would stay home with my brother and I, make us dinner, and sit with us reading the paper while we finished up our homework. I remember that since my brother was older, he was smarter and never asked for help. He would come home with perfect grades while I bothered him for help with every other question, always relying on my brother to see if my work was right. I made okay grades but my father never praised my work like he did my brother. I never resented my brother for it though – he deserved what he had worked so hard for.

“After high school, I had left for about a year and had just got a new manager and started to get auditions for background singing harmonies on other people’s record deals. I came home on a Sunday night and found my dad at home watching the television. Since my brother and I had moved out, he had taken to the bottle on Sunday nights. He was drunk and he cursed at me and swore I would never amount to anything. He tore down everything I had tried so hard to build up.” Kerli’s eyes dripped with tears.

“He didn’t… hit you, did he?”

She shook her head, scrubbing away her tears. “No, but that might have hurt less. The next morning I woke up and my brother had just come in. We used to co-ordinate schedules so that we would all be home at the same time. As soon as he walked in my dad clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a hug. He asked him questions about his schooling and then he looked at me. He didn’t and, to this day, doesn’t remember what he had said to me. My mom came into the kitchen and told us both to sit down and we ate breakfast with them.

“To this day, my dad’s words still haunt me. That’s the worst I’ve ever been hurt.” She leant over the table to snatch a tissue from the cardboard box with blue stripes adorning each side. “Now you,” she carefully wiped the tear tracks from her face, careful not to disturb the make-up she had so carefully applied that morning.

“I’ve been in love with someone since I was old enough to understand the meaning of the word. Long story short: They don’t return my feelings.” He was about to stop, but the look on her face told him to continue and he spoke again. “I have to look at him every day and see that he doesn’t feel the same way. It’s hard. I’ve struggled with who I am for so long just to get him to notice and once I told him, he just… I don’t know.” Bill let out a long breath.

Kerli was watching the twin with a look as if she wanted to ask a question. “I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re wondering. If I didn’t love him, I’m almost certain that I would date girls. I just can’t change this.”

The two vocalists lapsed into silence, each singer thinking about Bill’s confession. “Alright, time to start again. Shake it off and we start from the top.”

Bill smiled at the blonde across from him, “Okay.”

____

“Tom, try that part again, this time from the top.” David sat in the booth with the music producer, a sound technician, and Bill. Kerli left for lunch a bit after they had laid down the rough vocals. Now, it was time for the instrumental. Georg and Gustav were with Tom in the sound proofed room making tweaks to their music.

The song started with Gustav’s drumming and the notes of Georg’s bass guitar strumming through the headphones as Tom worked the guitar like a pro. He was on a roll and everything was great until he got to the first hook and his eyes looked up for a second into Bill’s and even though it was just one strum, everyone heard it. It was wrong. Tom let out a big breath and swore as he stopped the vibrating strings. “Again, Tom,” the producer stayed patient with the young guitarist.

Once again, the song was run through and it was up to the hook again when Tom glimpsed at his brother, so near yet so far in the glass booth and missed a chord this time. Bill got up from his seat and opened the door to the sound proofed area. “Fuck!” Tom was pissed now.

“Tomi, wha-”

“Just go back into the booth, Bill,” he had his hand rubbing across his bandana-clad forehead.

“But I just want to-“

“God Bill! Trying to send everyone a fucking message? Huh? What, cat got your tongue now?”

“Tom, stop!” Bill cried over Tom’s voice. He didn’t want this to go further. He knew someone would end up hurt.

“Why can’t you just leave good enough alone? Why Bill?” Tom’s hand pushed the music from the stand by accident.

His resolve was pushing Bill further, “You don’t understand!”

“I think I understand perfectly fine, thanks. I heard it loud and clear.”

“But you’re obvious not listening, Tom. Maybe your bandana is tied too tight to get my message through your thick skull!” He pulled on one of the ends of Tom’s bandana along with a couple dreads and gave a swift yank.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Tom shouted as he shoved Bill away.

David came out of the booth with the intent of breaking this fight up. He was afraid that someone was going to throw a punch and then the label would throw a shit-fit if someone got injured because the band still had one last gig to play. “Guys stop!”

Both turned on him, identical faces blazing, “Stay out of this!”

The two turned back to each other, chests heaving as adrenaline was rushing through their veins. Each was silently daring the other to speak first. Bill turned away and started for the control booth, “Just get the damn chord right this time.”

“Just say it to my face.”

“I already did.”

“Say it again.”

Bill turned around and stalked back over to Tom and stood with only mere inches betwixt them. “Why are you doing this?” he said loud enough for only Tom to hear. “Why?”

“I want to hear it again.”

“I said it once and you ignored me. You left me alone, Tomi. I can’t live like this. I can’t pretend like all of this doesn’t hurt me anymore. You need to make up your mind, and you need to do it here and now.”

Faced with the ultimatum, Tom forgot about everyone there, tunnel vision focusing only on Bill. “I can’t live like this either.”

“You know what you want?”

The answer of “yes” was breathed out of Tom’s lips.

“Then do something about it!” Bill’s eyes flicked back and forth to Tom’s eyes and down to his lips twice before waiting a few seconds. When Tom remained still, Bill turned once again, intent on going to the booth to gather his things before going back to the hotel.

Tom’s hand snatched Bill’s arm and pulled him off balance to stop against him, their lips meeting by chance. They froze for a moment before Tom truly kissed his brother, a soft and chaste kiss that was returned before they broke apart. Tom’s arms had wound around Bill’s waist and Bill’s arms encompassed Tom’s shoulders. They came closer into a tight hug, each snuggling into the other.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“In my arms, forever you’ll be…” Bill began.

Tom smiled and looked over Bill’s shoulder at a flabbergasted David, “Strange.” He was complete.

 


End file.
